Every year, in an attempt to better protect their information and their identity, more and more people are considering removing files from their computers. Whether they’re deleting old documents or wiping a hard drive completely free of data, the concern is that past conversations and data-sharing could cause problems for them in the future. With such a broad range of options available when it comes to erasing information from your computer, it can be difficult to know which will leave you safe.
The data on hard drives is never completely gone unless you erase it. However, if you want to make sure that your data is no longer retrievable from your hard drive, there are a few ways to do this. One way is to overwrite the file with random data. To do this, clean the free space on the drive and then copy a bunch of ones and zeros until the entire drive is filled up with these random characters.
